Back off, haters: Ed Sheeran says there’s no shame in pop

There are plenty of people who want to bash the pop music industry, but Ed Sheeran is not one of them. In fact, he thinks it’s the No. 1 music people listen to.

Ed Sheeran has already enjoyed a successful career — and is about to release his new album titled x (pronounced multiply) — but he’s also a truly passionate musician and it seems his passion does not only reflect one particular music genre.

While many music fans and artists now bash the pop genre, the red-headed singer has a different viewpoint and believes it’s shameful to criticize pop, a genre that has had such a massive influence on the lives of young people.

“Pop (and, especially, hip-hop) producers are as important as rock auteurs, Beyoncé is as worthy of serious consideration as Bruce Springsteen, and ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act,” the British singer revealed during an interview with Radio.com, The Sunday World reports.

“I’d say pop music is still the number one music that people listen to and has been for the past 70 years, 80 years — however many years. As long as it’s popular, it’s pop music I guess.”

Fellow musicians One Direction have achieved mass success, and their group is considered to be pop, and Sheeran would be happy to work with the boys again in the future. They previously worked together on the hit song “Little Things.”

“I don’t know what I could do with five people in a room. Like, if it was one on one, if I wrote five different songs, one with each of them, then it would work, but I’m a control freak when it comes to writing songs and too many cooks doesn’t work,” he told Radio.com.

“I’d want it to go in a certain direction — no pun intended — and, like, everyone has an opinion and I wouldn’t want it dragged all those different ways. So yes, I would work with each of them individually, but not five of them at once.”